When Wife said she wanted to see this arthouse French movie as a matinee during our break and laughed, it’s two hours of cooking with no talking, I sort of thought she was joking, but she wasn’t, so I figured I would write a list of all the best dishes they cook as a sort of countdown because the film has essentially no plot.
10. The Big Ball of Pastry that All Those Definitely Not Noble Rich Frenchmen Attack with Eugenie
I spent some time trying to find stills of all the food from the movie to very little success, so I’m trying to find things that will help you visualize it a little before you walk into this movie, but suffice it to say when you get to the scene where five men are seduced into grabbing at the fluffiest bread you’ve ever seen, you’re here. It’s so soft and puffy and the bread bubble at the top is so bubbly that it feels almost indecent to watch them squeeze it.
9. The Halibut in Milk
Truly deranged, WTF moment early on when you watch them cook for fully twenty minutes before this fucker comes into the picture and the meal really goes off the rails. Or on? If you like watching this guy slowly boil in dairy?
8. The Fuzzy Boar
This is actually a sad part of the movie, when Dodin is figuring out the menu he wants to put together to wow the Price of Europe with Eugenie, just as she’s coming down with her fainting spell again, and so it’s all the wilder that this little guy gets such a tender moment, placed next to Dodin by the groundskeeper.
7. The Omelettes
I am actually really adverse to almost every meal that’s made in this film, even though I like everyone else who went to see this movie am aware that all of it was REAL INGREDIENTS for EVERY TAKE, and that’s still true of the omelettes that Dodin makes for Eugenie when he’s having his day of taking care of her thing going on, but they really are kind of mesmerizing in their simplicity, like a live-action gif of some Miyazaki cooking sequence.
6. The Shrimps
I remember this one year I was dating this girl from a small island town on the East Coast of North America, and in the spring she and her family were going crazy over spot prawn even though she’s vegetarian, because spot prawn only are in season for a matter of weeks and so I went over to have spot prawn with her mom even though we kind of weren’t really working as a couple anymore and I was asking her if we could break up but she kind of moved in with me because she was subleasing her apartment for the summer and that’s mostly what I think about whenever I see shrimps like the ones in this movie being made into food.
5. That Flaky Pastry Made With Dad Hands and the Naked Plum (Spoilers)
There’s this scene where Dodin is kind of eye fucking Eugenie while she eats all of his food alone in a candle lit room alone, which is a lot more romantic than it sounds, and he invents this kind of airy pastry to hide a sexy fruit that reminds him of her when she’s naked and waiting for him in bed, and that’s not what this is a photo of–that’s a carrot root sitting in curry–but it’s as close as I could find.
4-1. Pauline’s Face(s) <When She Eats the Breakfast> or Anytime
Technically this isn’t a food, I guess, but Pauline’s face when she’s eating anything not cooked well is kind of the most amazing thing about this movie. The film seems so earnest and loving at first and then Dodin talks shit about their housekeeper’s cooking and you start to notice the little facial movements he makes when he’s not altogether happy with something, like the way he sort of stares off into the middle distance while listening to a trainwreck of a menu by the European Prince who’s trying to impress him.
So, to summarize, this French movie is mostly an extended ASMR of heavy breathing and chopping sounds meets food porn special on public access television. At no point did I want to eat the food, because I am uncultured swine, and think before you maintain a relationship beyond its sell-by date for the sake of spot prawns.
